Saturday, May 3, 2014

Dallas ISD Trustees and Data

(Email
sent 5/4/14 to DISD Trustees)

You were either present
to hear or have read the priceless feedback from the DISD Student Summit this
past week.Some of the most valuable feedback
was from Adamson sophomore Rebecca Woo who was quoted in the Dallas Morning
News as stating:

“There are too many
subs in the classroom….We propose that
school ratings should go up or down based on the number of subs that a school
has for the year. We shouldn’t have to have subs. The teachers should be there
just like us.”

DISD must have such student summits more often. How valid are Ms. Woo’s
concerns?Is such data available daily,
or even by the month, for DISD trustees by school and for the entire district?

DISD now has the ability to notify parents immediately when their child is
not in class. Why not also have such notifications when the teacher is
absent?Actively involved parents, such
as DISD claims to want to nurture, would want to know.

Currently it is reported that more teachers than last year are planning to
leave DISD. Teacher turnover has gone from 12.9% to 26.5% over the past 3
years according to data available from the Annual Data Planning
Packets for DISD on the Data Portal at: https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/cdp.jsp .Many speak of turnover in excess of 30% this
year.

These Data Packets also record that during the 2011/12 school
year the average teacher only missed 6.1 days of class. That average went
up to 7.5 for the 2012/13 school year. What is that average
now with the potentially record numbers of teachers leaving the
district?

Student attrition has led
to DISD now having the lowest high school enrollment in 5 years!The DISD Class of 2014 reflects the first
reduction in 12th grade enrollment in 7 years.With the loss of 500 students it is also the biggest
drop in 12th grade enrollment in decades!

Such teacher and student attrition patterns have followed our current
superintendent for 8 years and through employment in 2 districts.

Dallas ISD will not make needed improvements and reforms if Dallas ISD Trustees
refuse to talk about these patterns! Here are five questions not
being publicly discussed. Please provide your thoughts on them. Critiques of
the data, as well as the interpretations given in this email, are welcomed:

1) While a strict strategy of not
passing low achieving students on to the next grade leads to greater student
attrition, it also raises district ACT grade averages. Such
policies, when strictly enforced, increase the number of low
achieving students who leave the district.Do you support such a strategy in DISD?Is it a priority for you to have more students graduating or a higher average
ACT score for DISD? (The Class of 2014 may be the smallest DISD
graduation class in years, but that class will probably have higher
average ACT scores.)

2)
DISD high school enrollment is now the lowest in 5 years. As a DISD
trustee, what will you do if such secondary level enrollment losses continue in
spite of record enrollments at the elementary level? (High school
enrollment dropped over 25% under Mike Miles in Colorado while elementary
enrollment rose enough to make up the difference.)

3) DISD suffered the first drop in senior enrollment in 7 years this year with
the Class of 2014. It was the largest such drop in decades! Does the
history of much greater drops in senior enrollment (over 32%) under Mike Miles
during his last 4 years in Colorado bother you?Why or why not?

4) DISD parents can now be notified immediately if their child
is absent any school day. Should the absence of their child's teacher be
included in such notices? Should such data on daily teacher
absences and vacancies, by school and for the district, (but NOT by teacher) be
tabulated constantly and made public immediately?

5) Will you be
vigilant and demand more transparency and precision in numbers used so the
public will know when the percentage of students being tested goes down, as
happened with a 23% reduction in minority students taking the ACT test this
past year?

Please answer these questions as your thoughts are valuable to
Dallas.You only need to hit reply and
insert your answers between each of the above questions.

A listing of the answers received by trustee will be kept online
at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2014/05/dallas-isd-trustees-and-data.html
(below this posting.)

The fact that answers to these questions are being requested of
each DISD Trustee is being shared with the media and the public, and at the
above link.

Thank you for all you do for our children.If, over time, you want to change your answer,
updates will gladly be made.

About Bill

Retired middle school teacher & social worker with student motivation hobby. Resume at http://www.openadoption.org/bbetzen/resume.htm. The only other Bill Betzen online is his grandfather (1890-1969.) bbetzen@aol.com